During this period she even tried to treat Joe with sweet courtesy, but Joe told her not to make herself “more of a doggoned fool” than she was. And soon the dream began to lose its brightness. The book would not advance, and what she wrote did not seem to her wonderful--not inspired and fascinating as it ought to have been. Her reading had given her some slight critical insight. She then showed parts of it to her admirers, hoping thus to justify vanity, but they used the occasion to pay irrelevant compliments, and so disappointed her--all, save Will Thornton, who admitted critically that “it was poetic” and guessed “she ought to write poetry.” Accordingly she wrote some lyrics, and one on “Vanished Hopes” really pleased her. Forthwith she read it to Will, who decided “'twas fine, mighty fine. Tennyson had written more, of course, but nothing better--nothing easier to understand.” That last phrase killed her trust in him. She sank into despondence. Even when Ida Gulmore, whom she had learned to dislike, began to outshine her in the class, she made no effort. To graduate first of her year appeared a contemptible ambition in comparison with the dreams she had foregone. About this period she took a new interest in her dress; she grew coquettish even, and became a greater favourite than ever. Then Professor Roberts came to the University, and with his coming life opened itself to her anew, vitalized with hopes and fears. She was drawn to him from the first, as spirit is sometimes drawn to spirit, by an attraction so imperious that it frightened her, and she tried to hold herself away from him. But in her heart she knew that she studied and read only to win his praise. His talents revealed to her the futility of her ambition. Here was one who stood upon the heights beyond her power of climbing, and yet, to her astonishment, he was very doubtful of his ability to gain enduring reputation. Not only was there a plane of knowledge and feeling above the conventional--that she had found out by herself--but there were also table-lands where teachers of repute in the valley were held to be blind guides. Her quick receptivity absorbed the new ideas with eagerness; but she no longer deluded herself. Her practical good sense came to her aid. What seemed difficult or doubtful to the Professor must, she knew, be for ever impossible to her. And already love was upon her, making her humility as sweet as was her admiration. At last he spoke, and life became altogether beautiful to her. As she learned to know him intimately she began to understand his unworldliness, his scholar-like idealism, and ignorance of men and motives, and thus she came to self-possession again, and found her true mission. She realized with joy, and a delightful sense of an assured purpose in life, that her faculty of observation and practical insight, though insufficient as “bases for Eternity,” would be of value to her lover. And if she now and then fell back into the part of a nineteenth-century Antigone, it was but a momentary relapse into what had been for a year or so a dear familiar habit. The heart of the girl grew and expanded in the belief that her new _rôle_ of counsellor and worldly guide to her husband was the highest to which any woman could attain.